Workers move rice sacks from a ship to a warehouse in the Mekong Delta Province of Tien Giang. Vietnam has over eight million tons of rice available for export in 2020 – PHOTO: TRUNG CHANH

CAN THO – Apart from the volume of rice set aside for domestic consumption, Vietnam has around 13.5 million tons of paddy (unhusked rice) available for export this year, equivalent to over eight million tons of rice, heard attendees at a teleconference on March 27.

Paddy yields from the 2019-2020 winter-spring crop in southern Vietnam reached an estimated 11.2 million tons, according to Le Thanh Tung, deputy head of the Department of Crop Production, under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

For the 2020 summer-autumn crop, rice farmers in the south are expected to harvest over nine million tons of unhusked rice. As for the autumn-winter crop this year, paddy yields will exceed four million tons.

Overall, the southern region will generate some 25 million tons of unhusked rice this year.

According to a report from the agriculture ministry, the country is set to produce 43.5 million tons of paddy, or over 27 million tons of rice, in 2020.

Of this, nearly 30 million tons of paddy, equivalent to nearly 19 million tons of rice, have been set aside for domestic consumption.

Therefore, the remaining amount of some 13.5 million tons of paddy, or over eight million tons of rice, can be exported to foreign markets.

Meanwhile, the country’s rice export volume for this year is forecast to reach 6.5-6.7 million tons, far below the amount available for outbound sale.

With these figures, the concern over an acute shortage of rice for export has been eased.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade recently asked Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc to allow rice exports to continue shortly after the General Department of Vietnam Customs ordered its local offices to suspend rice export clearance from March 24 over food security concerns.